A communication network for an organization is typically comprised of network devices coupled together through a computer network and a PBX switch, telephones, and other voice devices coupled together in a telephone network. Network devices such as firewalls, proxy servers, and web servers, along with some voice devices such as PBXs generate logs representing inbound and outbound computer and telephone network activity, respectively. Within the organization, telephone system managers review voice device generated log reports regarding telephone usage and network administrators use network device generated log reports regarding computer network resource utilization. As a result, system managers and network administrators focus on only a portion of an organization's communication network without knowledge of all of the communication network issues that exist for an organization.
In many organizations abuse and misuse of communication devices cause significant productivity loss. In addition, more mundane tasks such as traffic management, costs allocation, operating efficiency, and disaster avoidance are often overlooked by system managers or network administrators as they handle the surge of issues and problems that arise daily. As communication technology continues to converge, the telephone system manager and network administrator functions also converge. This is particularly the case in organizations that use computer integrated telephony. Computer integrated telephony couples the telephone network to the computer network within an organization to provide data files to desktop computers in conjunction with telephone calls arriving at an associated handset or to permit the exchange of messages between voicemail systems and email systems.
In organizations where the network communication network and the telephone communication network are separated, vigilance regarding the efficient utilization of the company's communication resources is difficult. For example, employees that abuse telephone privileges, especially long distance services, are frequently the same employees who use Internet access to obtain files that are not work related. A computer network manager may become aware of abuse from a network activity monitoring system that tracks Internet access or other computer network activities associated with an employee's computer user identifier. However, the telephone network manager does not have data that correlates the user identifier to any devices on the telephone network. Thus, abusive activity on one network is not readily available for detecting abusive activity on the other network. If information regarding the usage of communication resources for an organization were more integrated, abusive activities on one communication network might lead to the discovery of abuses on another communication network for the organization.
When employees are transferred within an organization, an employee is frequently assigned a new telephone extension and a new computer. When this occurs, both the computer network manager and telephone system manager must separately update their respective records to identify the change in ownership of devices on a network. Such changes include the reassignment of the employee's old telephone extension number and computer user identifier as well as the assignment of a new telephone extension and/or computer user identifier to the employee. The synchronization of these data changes in computer network, telephone network, and organizational data across several databases may result in erroneous allocation of activity from a data device to an employee or other ownership entity. As a consequence, maintaining synchronization of ownership rights to various communication resources within an organization is difficult and problematic.
What is needed is a system and method for integrating data about data devices used on computer and telephone networks of an organization.
What is needed is a system and method for more efficient tracking and synchronization of ownership rights with respect to communication devices on both computer and telephone networks.